DEV Community: Guilherme

VIM - Windows

Guilherme — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 07:24:44 +0000

Commands:

Horizontal Split: Crtl-w s or

:sp

Vertical Split: Crtl-w v or

:vs

Close window: Crtl-w q or

:q

Close all windows expect the current one: Crtl-w o or:

:on

Navigate to the next window: Crtl-w w

Navigate to window in the direction wanted: Crtl-w and hjkl

Increase or Decrease the height of the window: Crtl-w and + or -

Increase or decrease the width of the window: Crtl-w and < or >

Maximize the height of the window: Crtl-w _

Maximize the width of the window: Crtl-w |

Make all windows to the same size: Crtl-w =

Rotate window: Crtl-w r

Rotate window in the opposite direction: Crtl-w R

Rotate window to specific direction: Crtl-w and HJKL

Open all buffers into windows:

:ba

Execute command on all opened windows:

:windo

VIM - Buffers

Guilherme — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 05:45:53 +0000

Buffer is a temporary space in memory used to store data. That is how VIM works when editing multiple files.

Open Multiple files

You can open multiple files with:

vim file1.txt file2.txt

Or:

vim file*.txt

Open a new buffer without display it

:badd file5.txt

Listing buffers

To list the buffers on VIM:

:buffers

The short version is :b or :ls.

:ls
  1      "buf-ant.txt"                  line 1
  2 #h + "buf-bed.txt"                  line 1
  3 %a   "buf-cat.txt"                  line 1
  4      "buf-dad.txt"                  line 1
Press ENTER or type command to continue

Buffer Number	Indicators	File name	Line position

Indicators:

'a' - active - The buffer is displayed in a window
'h' - hidden - The buffer is not displayed
' ' - inactive - The buffer is not displayed and does not contain anything

% - Buffer current display
# - Alternate buffer (last buffer used)
+ - Modified buffer

You can open a new file using the edit command:

:e file3.txt

Buffers Navigation

To navigate through the buffers use the command:

Next buffer:

:bnext or bn

Previous buffer:

:bprevious or bp

You can use the buffer number:

:b2

To take you to the first buffer:

:bf

To take you to the last buffer:

:bl

Switching between current and previous buffer: Ctrl^

Use the setting hidden to turn on all buffers in hidden mode, so you can navigate through them without the necessity of saving changes every time you switch buffers:

:set hidden

Closing a buffer:

:bd

Closing all buffers and VIM gives you a fresh buffer:

:%bd

To run commands in all buffers, use the buffer do command. I.e do a global substitution on all buffers:

:bufdo %s/#/@/g

If you do not have the hidden option set, VIM will show an error because you are trying to switch buffer without saving the current one. You can use the separate operator to save all changes:

:bufdo %s/#/@/g | w

VIM Explorer

Navigate through files, use the explore command or E:

:E

VIM - Macros

Guilherme — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 06:18:15 +0000

Macros are a sequence of commands recorded to a register.

Recording a macro:

Type the q key followed by the register.
I.e: To start recording a macro in the register a, type: q a

You should see a message in the status line at the bottom of the VIM: recording @a

To stop recording a macro, just type q.

To check what is recorded in the register @a for example, you can type:

:reg a

To replay a macro that is recorded on register a, type @ a , you can also use @ @ to repeat the last macro used.

Macro best practices

Normalize the cursor position: 0
Perform edits and operation
Position your cursor to enable easy replays: j

TIP: You can apply the macro to multiple line using count.

I.e: Applying the macro to the next 5 lines {count}{@}{macro} : 5 @ a

Example using Macros

Let's say you having the following text:

1 FIRST NAME: Joseph LAST NAME: Andrews
2 FIRST NAME: Scott LAST NAME: Young
3 FIRST NAME: Jessica LAST NAME: Smith
4 FIRST NAME: Shirley LAST NAME: Landers
5 FIRST NAME: Pamela LAST NAME: Lewis

And you want to remove FIRST NAME: and LAST NAME, the result should be:

1 Joseph Andrews
2 Scott Young
3 Jessica Smith
4 Shirley Landers
5 Pamela Lewis

Steps

Start recording a macro at register b: q b
Position the cursor at the first character in the line: 0
Delete the first 2 words: 2 d W
Move your cursor to the next word: W
Repeat the last operation: .
Move your cursor to the next line: j
Stop recording: q
Apply the macro to the next 4 lines: 4 @ b

Or you could use global command:

:g/\(FIRST\|LAST\) NAME: /norm 2dWW.

VIM - Search, Replace, Text Objects and Tags.

Guilherme — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 06:26:22 +0000

Same Line Search Mode:

f{char} - Forward search
F{char} - Reverse search
t{char} - move you to the next occurrence of the character afterwards
T{char} - Same as t but in reverse
; - Repeat in the same direction
, - Repeat in the opposite direction

Searching:

/{pattern} - Forward search
?{pattern} - Reverse search
n - Repeat search in the same direction
N - Repeat search in the opposite direction
* - Forward search for word where the cursor is current located
# - Reverse search for word where the cursor is current located

Substitute Command

Format:

:[range]s/{pattern}/{string}/[flags]

Global Substitution:

:%s/{pattern}/{string}/g

Text Object & Tags

Format:

{operator}{a}{object}
{operator}{i}{object}

Examples:

daw - Delete A Word
ciw - Change Inner Word
ci" - To change what is inside quoted strings
di[ - Delete what is inside brackets
yi< - Yank what is inside angle brackets
dap - Delete the entire paragraph
yas - Yank a sentence. A sentence is defined as ending at a '.', '!' or '?' followed by either the end of a line, or by a space or tab.

VIM - Insert and Change

Guilherme — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 16:18:33 +0000

As I mentioned in the post before, VIM is one of the techs I want to learn this year. VIM has been always present since my early days in tech but I never spend time on it. I guess now it is time to make an amend with the past. 😅

Insert Mode:

i - insert before the cursor
I - insert in the beginning of the line
a - insert after the cursor
A - insert in the end of the line
o - insert below the line
O - insert before the line
[count] [motion] text - repeat the motion [count] times

Examples:
8 i * - insert the character * 8 times in the same line
8 o # - create 8 new lines starting with #

Change:

R - overwrite the existing text
r - Replace one character
c w - change the word
c c - Change the entire line
c $ or C - replace from your current cursor to the end of the line
~ - Switch character from upper/lower case.
g ~ w - Switch a letter from upper/lower case.
g ~ $ or g ~ ~ - Switch the line to upper/lower case.
g U w - make the word uppercase
g U U - make all the line uppercase
g u w - make the word lowercase
g u u - make all the line lowercase

Joining lines:

J - Join lines with a space by the end of the current line.
g J - Join lines without a space be the end the current line.
[count] J - Joint [count] lines together

Technologies I want to learn or keep improving in 2023

Guilherme — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 16:08:03 +0000

It is 2023 already! I wanna to keep growing as a software engineer. Here are some of the technologies I would like to learn/improve this year.

VIM
AWS
TailwindCSS
React / Typescript (Keep improving in these techs)
tRPC
Machine Learning